New Compound Is Hailed as Boon to Ozone Shield

By PHILIP SHABECOFF, Special to the New York Times

Published: January 14, 1988

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13—
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company and a small company, Petroferm Inc., announced today that they had developed a compound that would permit reduced use of one of the most widely used chemicals blamed for depleting the earth's ozone shield.

The development was hailed by spokesmen for the two companies, officials of the Environmental Protection Agency and private environmental groups as an important step in the global effort to freeze and roll back the use of the chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons and halons.

Evidence that has emerged in recent years indicates that chlorofluorcarbons, or CFC's, and halons are combining chemically with ozone molecules in the upper atmosphere to destroy the ozone. Atmospheric ozone shields the earth from excessive ultraviolet radiation from the sun. As the shield thins, scientists have warned, there would be increased cases of skin cancer and other illness in humans as well as damage to plants, forests and aquatic life.

At a meeting in Montreal in September, nearly 50 nations approved an agreement calling for the production of CFC's and their use to be frozen by stages and eventually rolled back by 50 percent by the end of the century.

Many of the participants in the Montreal meeting said that reaching the goals established in the protocol would depend on finding substitutes for the CFC's, which are broadly used by industry for refrigeration and air-conditioning, foam-blowing for insulation and packaging and solvents. Compound Produced Jointly

Particularly difficult, according to many, including the Japanese delegation, would be finding a substitute for CFC-113, a compound used as a solvent for cleaning electronic equipment. Now A.T.&T. and Petroferm say they have jointly produced a safe and environmentally sound alternative to CFC-113 that can clean electronic circuit boards ''as well as or better than chlorofluorocarbons or chlorinated solvents.''

Today's announcement was made at a conference on substitutes for CFC's and halons, sponsored by the Conservation Foundation, a private environmental group, the E.P.A. and Environment Canada.

Eileen B. Claussen, director of the E.P.A.'s office that is overseeing the CFC program, called the development of the substitute for CFC-113 a ''major breakthrough.''

A.T.&T. uses three million pounds of CFC-113 a year. A spokesman for the company said today that the new compound could replace 20 to 30 percent of the company's uses of the chemical within the next two years and that the proportion would keep rising after that.

Worldwide, an estimated 360 million pounds of CFC-113 are used each year, about 17 percent of the estimated 2.1 billion pounds of all types of CFC's that are produced globally each year. Experts said the new compound had the potential eventually to replace a large proportion of the CFC 113 in global use.

The new product, BIOACT EC-7, countains compounds called terpene hydrocarbons that can be extracted from a number of natural products, including citrus fruit rinds and wood. Cost Is Called Competitive

Substituting the new compound for CFC requires a new process and equipment for cleaning the solder off the circuit boards after the integrated electronic circuits have been attached. Executives of A.T.&T. and Pertroferm said the cost of the new compound would be competitive with that of CFC-113.

William R. Galloway Jr., chief executive of Petroferm, said that the compound is now commercially available and, in fact, 10 other smaller companies have started using it.

In a related development, the Fort Howard Corporation, a manufacturer of paper and plastic products, announced today that the company was giving up the use of CFC-11 and CFC-12 for making its foam cups, plates and sandwich containers and substituting an environmentally sounder agent, Formacel-S, which is manufactured by Du Pont. The product is a foam agent made of chlorofluorocarbons with an added hydrogen molecule.